Americans have more sources of information than ever available to them but measuring how much information is consumed by Americans over what technologies and information media is not easy. Beginning way back in the days when the famed social scientist Ithiel De Sola Pool made some of the first estimates of information consumption (basing his analysis mostly on the number of words consumers viewed or read over various media), many efforts have been made to analyze information consumption in the U. S. All are far from perfect because none of the analyses can really do much to assess the value of the information consumed. For example, reading a copy of the Constitution online for a research project would likely be viewed by many as inherently more worthy and valuable than watching a half hour comedy TV show. Yet, when measured by the number of bytes consumed to read the Constitution versus watching the comedy show, the amount of bytes of information conveyed via the TV would far surpass the amount of information processed in reading the Constitution.
A recent report from report from the Global Information Industry Center at the University of California in San Diego takes the latest stab at analyzing the quantity of information consumed by Americans. The report entitled “How Much Information? 2009 Report on American Consumers” offers some fascinating insights. I have questions and quibbles with many parts of the report but it is hard to argue with the depth of analysis and high quality data gathering that went into this report.
The report uses a number of analytical approaches to boil down a host of reports and information sources into three basic metrics: the number of hours spent consuming various media, the amount of information consumed in terms of bytes, and the number of words consumed. Some might be surprised that TV still dominates both the number of hours of information consumption and the quantity of bytes. But on another level, it is probably accurate to say that a major reason for this disparity is that video simply requires lots of capacity or bytes to convey information. Video watching on the Internet is growing but the report notes it remains a relatively small share of total video information consumed.
Traditional media – such as radio – is not dying as some might think. Radio listening takes up 19 percent of the time spent consuming information. However, it is listened to in the home only rarely. Almost all radio listening is done in the car and the number of bytes of information consumed in the form of words over radio programs is small, probably because a lot of listening is in the form of music and songs.
Other traditional media such as newspapers and magazines is also a very small percentage of word consumption and time consumption as well. Clearly the use of these traditional media is shrinking but people are still reading news and reports about current events. They are simply doing so over PCs more and more. Twenty-seven percent of all words consumed is via computers. Interestingly, when de Sola Poole did his analysis, some of the more important media he counted were direct mail, telexes, telegrams, mailgrams and faxes. Some of these media are hardly used or hardly exist any longer.
The analysis in this report still comes to the conclusion that entertainment and video over television remains the dominant share of information consumed on a byte basis. It suggests that video over computers remains a relatively small share of total entertainment and video consumption and I suspect this is true. However, I think the report mischaracterizes how rapidly video is changing and growing over the Internet. While Hulu remains relatively small in comparison to traditional TV viewing, it is growing very rapidly. Further, it is delivering HD quality video and YouTube just began to do the same thing. I believe in the next several years, video viewing over the Internet will grow tremendously, in part because of the every more capable broadband networks that exist today. But also because people are increasingly demanding customized, individualized services.
Strikingly, a huge source of byte consumption according to the report is gaming. Gaming consumes far more bytes than other media, including television. The interesting thing about gaming is that it is done over a range of platforms from high end PCs, to standard PCs, to gaming machines to cell phones (an increasingly important aspect of the gaming industry as some 50 to 60 million smart phones are now in use and the number is growing rapidly). If you add gaming online and via cell phones to the total amount of bytes consumed via PCs in web browsing, accessing videos and reading online information, I suspect that PCs (smart phones really are PCs too) rival the TV as an information and entertainment source.
More importantly, as the report points out, computers are now the most important two-way, interactive communications devices, bar none. According to the report, Americans average 1.6 hours a day conducting two-way communications. Almost 60 percent of that in terms of time was via the Internet using Instant Messaging, social networking sites, and email. Internet communications consumes 79 percent of the bytes and 73 percent of the words in total used in two-way communications of all kinds. As the report notes “The Internet is so important for two-way communications because of its unique technical characteristics, including a nearly universal network, very low variable costs, and the ability to handle both real-time and delayed activity.” Truly the rise of interactivity via the Internet – and I would add via cell phones and text messaging which while not an Internet medium is growing very rapidly – is a major finding in this report.
Just to put this in perspective, consider that every day over Verizon’s network, 100 million people connect using a cell phone, landline phone or broadband connection. The amount of information they send back and forth is staggering:
– 1.7 billion text messages exchanged
– 50 million video/pictures exchanged
– 400 million e-mails received
– 8.7 petabytes of video streamed—the equivalent of 4 million full-length movies
– 1 billion phone calls connected
Truly one of the unsung messages in this new report is just how astounding and transformative landline and wireless networks are. They enable must of the two-way communications (and gaming) that is transforming our lives.